Opinion

So, why did I—an introverted indoor kid—write a story about a tween joining so many clubs? Because, much like Maggie, I was once determined to define myself.

Eva passed away just 15 days after we accepted Little, Brown’s offer for the finished manuscript. She was on an education trip at Auschwitz when this happened. She wanted this book to reach every child out there.

In THE NATURAL GENIUS OF ANTS, Harvard Corson has a huge task in front of him and only a short summer to accomplish it—trying to get his doctor father to forgive himself for a very big mistake that cost a baby her life. Not only that, but Harvard also needs to keep an ant colony alive!

I owe a lot of my knowledge and fascination with history to the passion with which Chinese culture honors its past and the skills of storytellers in passing this heritage to new generations, and I hope to bring some of this passion to a young Western audience.

When I was in middle school, the word “nerd” was thrown around a lot, a word that then meant someone who was too much, who loved something too deeply. This passion was a delicate flame within me when I was 14, a little older than Elissa, the protagonist of my novel, We Are the Song.

When I finally found my way to writing a novel about growing up as an immigrant with hip dysplasia, it was this wholeness—not parts of me segmented into boxes—that guided me. I wrote Breathe and Count Back from Ten because the only way I can imagine creating books in a world that draws boundaries around my identity is to write myself beyond them.

Reporters and editors—we at SLJ included—want to get the story right, to bear witness, and to provide readers with accurate, relevant information. But the tenor of an increasingly polarized debate, with efforts to limit discussion of racism and LGBTQIA+ topics in the classroom, challenges journalists—much less educators and students—who must navigate a volatile climate.

As much as my younger self loved final girls like Gerda from The Snow Queen, Buffy Summers, and Clarice Starling however, these characters didn’t exactly reflect my lived experience. They were all white women and they were all at least coded as being Christian, if not outright stated to be so. So in 2019, I decided to write a final girl who was like me: Ilana Lopez, the biracial heroine of The Ghosts of Rose Hill. 

I like to think series books are the “Comfort Tacos” of the book world; they pull you in and swaddle you up in a world where you know you belong, know you feel comfortable, and where everything is just a little easier.